


Blood Red Tears

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [96]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each blood-red flower tells its own story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Red Tears

The river of red spilled out of one of the castle windows, flowed down the wall and joined a blood-red tide, flowing out onto the grass and settling around the base of the towering grey stone bastion.

Marina Holmes stood amidst the crowd, many of whom were taking selfies on phones and tablets, using the poppies as a backdrop, and wondered which of 800,000 or so ceramic flowers represented her husband.

Terence John Holmes – TJ to family and friends – had been born in Mayday Hospital, Croydon, 31 years ago. If he’d lived, they would have been celebrating his birthday today. But instead, he’d died four years ago. Marina had taken Charlie to school as usual and had then gone home, held a picture of TJ on the beach at Brighton playing with his son, and had sobbed her heart out.

Then she’d put the picture back on the mantelpiece and made herself a cup of tea before starting work. She was a freelance copy editor, so worked from home. Normally she was glad of the freedom that gave her, but there were some days when she missed having people around her. It was then that she’d decided to go up to London for the day to see the memorial and pay her respects to all those who’d died in a hundred years of wars.

Part of the trouble for her was that she didn’t even know how TJ had died. That was the price you paid if you had a husband in Special Forces. His CO had broken the news in person, but there hadn’t been much Captain Ryan had been able to tell her. TJ had died doing a job he loved, but whether that had been out of the country in some foreign war she barely understood or here in the UK, she didn’t know, although from a couple of chance remarks TJ had made, she very much suspected the latter.

But she’d never know the truth, and she’d even started to come to terms with that.

When she’d heard about the poppy memorial, she’d gone on line and put in an order for one. It would go in her small back garden, amongst the herb garden. TJ had enjoyed going out there with a pair of scissors and snipping chives for an omelette or rosemary for roast potatoes or lamb. He’d bought her the rosemary bush as a Christmas present. It had survived being planted out at a wholly unsuitable time of year and had flourished despite been dug up and replanted during two house moves.

She still got the occasional call from Captain Ryan asking how she was doing, and cards at Christmas and birthdays from Clare and Cara. They were still in contact by email and phone, even though she’d moved back down to Addington so she could be close to both her parents and TJ’s. She missed the close friendships amongst the wives and girlfriends in Herefordshire, but she didn’t miss the tense wait for news of their loved ones, and had eventually learned not to dread the sound of an unexpected knock on the door, although she still preferred visitors to phone first.

Her hands gripped the iron railings and she leaned forward, staring at the river of flowing red, trying to pick out individual poppies, wondering if she was looking at the one she’d ordered for her and Charlie. Her parents had ordered one, too, so had TJ’s. She imagined a lot of her friends with husbands and boyfriends still serving had done the same. They were all too aware of the fact that the knock on the door might be for them, one day, and until then, all they could do was savour every minute together, even though for many, the return of their loved one was only the start of yet another row.

Service families had high levels of relationship breakdown, and the figure for those in Credenhill was even higher than the average. That was the reality of life with a bloke who couldn’t tell you where he was going, or when he’d be back. Who couldn’t share with you even a fraction of what he’d seen and done. Several of her friends just hadn’t been able to cope with that and they’d bailed out. Others stayed but resented every minute of it. Then there were those like Clare and Clare who just got on with their lives as best they could, waiting for their blokes to come home, the same way she’d always waited for TJ.

Until the day she’s find out he wasn’t coming home again.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” said a woman standing next to her.

Marina nodded but could speak around the lump in her throat.

They were beautiful. And when she had hers in the garden, she’d look at it every day and be thankful for the time she’d had with TJ. On other days she’d probably shed some tears. That was the way it went. Good days and bad days, even four years after that knock on the door.

She just wished she could know where and how he’d died, even if there was likely to be no comfort in the knowledge. But that wasn’t going to happen. So all she could do was stand there and brush the tears from her eyes, watch the river of red flowing into a sea of red and hope that however it had happened it had been quick and painless. Marina knew that she had to let go of that desire for knowledge. Let go and leave it behind. She needed to remember her husband’s life and not dwell on what she didn’t know. That was what TJ would have wanted. And some day she’d have to help Charlie come to terms with that same not knowing, so better if she could first make her own peace with that uncertainty.

Eventually, she gave in to the press of people around her and turned away, not even noticing the rain that had started to fall.

Behind her, moisture glistened on several million ceramic petals and fell to the ground in countless tears.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red poppy installation at the Tower of London in 2014. For those who would like to know, the OC is the wife of the soldier who died in Endangered Species.


End file.
